We love bringing fresh intriguing research, trends, and articles from the education market. With a niche focus on elements of classroom design, Fast Company has published an article, “Study Shows How Classroom Design Affects Student Learning: A New Study Shows How Color, Lighting, and other Classroom Design Choices can have a Huge Impact on Student Success,” based on the recent research of Building and the Environment. This research has “found that classroom design could be attributed to a 25% impact, positive or negative, on a student’s progress over the course of an academic year.”

“The study was conducted…with 751 students in 34 classrooms, spread across seven primary schools in the seaside town of Blackpool, England. After collecting data on the students’ performance levels going into the school year, the researchers, comprising faculty from the University of Salford School of the Built Environment, in Manchester, England, as well as collaborators from the architecture firm Nightingale Associates, ranked each classroom on a 1 to 5 scale for 10 different design parameters:

Light

Sound,

Temperature

Air Quality

Choice

Flexibility

Connection

Complexity

Color

Texture

Each of these parameters were broken down into a few considerations. Light, for example, included the amount of natural light entering the classroom, as well as the teacher’s ability to manually control the level of lighting; flexibility took into consideration how well a given classroom could accommodate pupils without crowding them, in addition to how easily its furniture could be rearranged for a variety of activities and teaching approaches.”